They rebrand drives made by Toshiba and Seagate: https://github.com/007revad/Synology_enable_M2_volume/wiki/S..., https://nascompares.com/guide/synology-hard-drives-and-ssds-...

This is actually not that rare. Enterprise server vendors always carried exorbitantly priced third party HDDs in plastic shells effectively as brand merches. But servers are contractor managed and/or severely discounted, so no perceivable harm is usually done.

The differences here are that they actually implemented software checks, for devices bought at MSRP. And so harm is felt.

What is there to understand? They want to sell you the drives directly. This is extremely common practice, see ink cartridges.

I think I understand. Synology willingly chose to emulate one of the most anti-consumer products on the planet.

And now I won't buy Synology for the same reason I won't buy ink jet.

I believe they were basically saying a set list of approved hard drives

No, it was their drives or nothing. The only approved ones were theirs. I am also a long term Synology user is is shopping around for a different brand for my replacement.

So you're saying the photo of a Synology branded (rebranded) 4TB HDD from the article is fake?

No I wasn't saying it was fake. I believe that was one of the approved but rebranded drives

You can find the compatible drives here https://www.synology.com/en-uk/compatibility